I wrote last week that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign was making statement after statement that wasn’t true. Now his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, has stooped to the same level with a misleading and erroneous ad.
Here’s the Spanish ad the campaign is airing in
For those who don’t speak Spanish, the ad opens with the narrator saying, “They want us to forget the insults we’ve put up with, the intolerance. They made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much.” Meanwhile, the ad shows conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh and gives these quotes from him: “stupid and unskilled Mexicans” and “You shut your mouth or you get out!”
Then the narrator says, “John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces — one that says lies just to get our vote, and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain, more of the same old Republican tricks.”
There are big problems with this ad. For starters, McCain led the charge for the comprehensive immigration-reform bill Limbaugh and others railed against and helped take down in Congress last year. Limbaugh doesn’t like McCain at all, as documented in this Washington Post article and this YouTube video. So linking McCain to Limbaugh is misleading.
Out-of-context quotes
There’s another problem with this ad. The two quotes from Limbaugh are taken completely out of context, ABC News is reporting.
The first quote about “stupid and unskilled Mexicans” came during a 1993 rant against NAFTA. Limbaugh was speaking about his belief that the bill would send jobs that require unskilled and uneducated workers south of the border and said, “If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I’m serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do — let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”
Though his quote may have been egregious, Limbaugh wasn’t calling all Mexicans “stupid and unskilled,” as the ad implies.
The second quote came in 2006, when Limbaugh was mocking Mexican law. He said Mexican law doesn’t give immigrants the right to protest.
“You’re allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies,” Limbaugh said. “You’re a foreigner: Shut your mouth or get out!”
He wasn’t speaking about some desire to kick immigrants who speak up out of
Patronizing
I’m not defending Limbaugh. He’s way out there, and it’s certainly possible that he believes Mexicans are stupid and that immigrants in
To further link the disingenuous misrepresentations of these quotes to McCain, who has had a historically moderate view of immigration and regularly refers to undocumented immigrants as “God’s children” on the campaign trail, is even more egregious.
As I wrote last week, the untruths from the McCain campaign have been nothing short of dishonorable, and I expected more from a campaign built largely on McCain’s honorable military and congressional record of service.
Similarly, I expected more from Obama, the so-called empowering community organizer, than advertising that tries to deceive Spanish speakers into opposing the other guy. That’s not empowering, and it isn’t change you can believe in, just like McCain’s dishonesty isn’t straight talk. Whether it’s McCain or Obama, using lies and misleading tactics is simply patronizing.